Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I’m your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I’m an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I’m going to give you your weekly horoscope and no bullshit, mystical advice for living your very best life.

My loves, welcome back to Ghost of a Podcast. So I don’t know if you’re following me on Instagram—I’m on Instagram. I’m @jessicalanyadoo. Last weekend, for 24 hours, I just answered a ton of questions. I just put in my stories, “Hey, people, send me questions,” and y’ll did send me a lot of questions. And one of them really surprised me. Somebody asked about interceptions, which I thought most people wouldn’t be that interested in. And it turns out that so many of you are interested in interceptions in the birth chart. And that is what I’m going to talk about here today.

It is a tricky topic to learn about because there’s not a lot of writing about it, but it is something that I use a great deal in my practice of astrology. So I’m going to share it here with you. As always, please do send me questions at ghostofapodcast.com—not on social media—just telling me what you want me to talk about and what you’d like to learn on the show, and I would be more than thrilled to share it with you.

Okay. So let’s talk about what intercept signs are and how to read planets that are intercepted. Okay. So let me explain what interceptions are. In the birth chart—and this is, of course, using Western Astrology where the birth chart is a wheel. It is like a big ass pizza with 12 slices, and each slice of the pizza is a house. Now, if you’re using equal sign houses or whole sign houses, two very legitimate and commonly used house systems that I absolutely don’t use and don’t like—don’t get mad at me; I’m just sharing my truth—if you use those house systems, then each slice of pizza, aka each house, is going to be the same size. That means you are not going to ever see or work with interceptions.

There’s many reasons why I use Campanus house systems, which is my—the house system of preference for me. And just a hot aside here, I’ll say, if you’re like, “Wait a minute. What’s a house system? What are you talking about here, Jessica?” I’m going to remind you that on episode 111, I talked about house systems, and I explained house systems with the help of very Virgo astrologer, Tony Howard. So you can go back and listen to that. But basically, one of the main reasons why I use Campanus house systems is because it yields these wonky sized houses, and they yield a lot of interceptions.

Each zodiac sign is 30 degrees. 0 degrees and one minute to 29 degrees and 59 minutes. But that doesn’t mean that each house in your birth chart or in any chart starts at zero degrees of the zodiac sign. If you want to know what sign is on the house cusp, what you would do is look at the line, so that all the lines separating each house—each line is the house cusp. And on the edge of it, on the outside or the outer side of the circle you should see drawn something that looks like two degrees Leo, 56 minutes. So in other words, a degree, a zodiac sign, and the minutes. That is if you are looking at a chart that an astrologer would look at.

So there are kind of like more beginner style charts, so it might say it in words, but generally speaking, it’s going to be a number with a degree sign after it and then the symbol for a zodiac sign and the minutes. And the reason why the minutes are important, because there are 60 minutes within a degree, if you have let’s say your second house cusp is at 10 degrees of Leo and 52 minutes, well, you want to think of it as an 11 degree house cusp—you want to round on up. If it’s something like 15 minutes, well, then you don’t want to round up.

Now that might be a little advanced and not really necessary for you to be thinking about, unless you are reading charts seriously. That said, let’s say you have 10 degrees Leo on your third house cusp. Well, that means there are 20 more degrees of the zodiac sign of Leo. Are they all found in that house? They could be. You might have a tiny little third house, and it might not be.

So in astrology there’s an order to the signs. So if you’re reading your Sun sign horoscope, or if you are a student of astrology then you know that Aries is the first sign, and Pieces is the twelfth sign—the last sign in the zodiac. This is not because Aries is immature, and Pieces is mature. Maturity is won; you’re not born with maturity. But I digress.

So right after the sign of Leo comes Virgo, and right after the sign of Virgo comes Libra. And, so, let’s say you’ve got 20 degrees of Leo in your third house, but you also have 30 degrees of Virgo in that house, and then the sign on the house cusp of your fourth house, let’s say it’s two degrees of Libra. That would mean you have kind of a big third house. And the way that you know that the sign Virgo is intercept that house is because it’s not on either house cusp.

So you have to actually comprehend and remember the order of the zodiac signs. So when you look at the house cusps, you have to be like, “Oh, snap. Something’s not there. Something’s missing.” A lot of astrology programs, they won’t notate that Virgo is in that third house. It just won’t be written. So you won’t see mention hide nor hair of Virgo. So some astrology programs will write it in, and that’s better for beginners. But you have to—this is where astrology is annoying because you have to memorize things. You have to remember which order the signs go in. Sorry.

Anyways, so you have 30 degrees of Virgo in that third house, but it’s not on the third house cusp or the fourth house cusp. That’s how you know you have an intercept sign in that house.

Now here’s a fun fact. Astrology is all about interconnectedness, so whenever you have something in one sign, you can look to the opposite sign and expect the same thing. So if you have all of Virgo intercept the third house, then you would know that the opposite house, the ninth house, has 30 degrees of Pieces intercept that house because Pieces is the opposite sign, and the ninth house is the opposite house.

If you really can’t conceive of this, if you can’t visualize what I’m talking about, you can go to Instagram and look at my highlights in my bio and click on the Learn Astrology tab, and then I have a visual aid for you—just in case you need a visual aid. Some people are visual learners.

So I’m going to unpack what an intercept sign means and then how to read intercept planets. When we are looking at intercept signs, you’ve got to understand a couple of things. Thing one—you have to understand the base meaning of each individual house. You have to know what the energies of a house are about. You need to know that the—let’s say we’re talking about the tenth house. It’s about your career, and it’s about your conscious life objectives. It’s about your reputation. It’s about how you orient yourself around what you do with your life, the arc of your life. Tenth house. So the tenth house means that regardless of what sign is in that house.

It’s valuable to know what sign is on the house cusp because that will give you a lot of information about your experience of that theme, or those themes. Now when there is a sign that’s intercept, a zodiac sign that is intercept in that house, what you can know is that the energies represented by that zodiac sign and the energies that are represented by that house or on the topic and themes of that house, those are things that you were essentially told—by sometimes with actual words, like verbally told—or you had it modelled to you that you are not supposed to embody, embrace,  or own that part of yourself.

And there’s only one reason why a parent or guardian would repress or discourage your own essential energies, and that’s because they have a problem with it themselves. So when we look at interceptions, we are seeing issues in not just you, but we are seeing the issues in the people who raised you. Because the only reason why a parent wouldn’t be able to encourage their child towards wholeness is because they’re threatened by it; they’re hurt by it. They are—they have their own issues to deal with.

Interceptions represent what we were told was not healthy or righteous to be, even though we are those intercepted energies. Where we have interceptions in the birth chart, are places that we have a hard time seeing ourselves because we have a hard time embracing and owning ourselves. So other people can see the energy just fine. Other people look at us, and they’re like, “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. You’re just like that.” So let’s say with my tenth house example, maybe somebody has Taurus intercept in their tenth house. No planets, just the zodiac sign Taurus intercept in their tenth house. Well, they might actually feel a real sense of it is wrong to be ambitious. It is wrong to center and prioritize beauty and the way things look, and I’m not supposed to take up space with my preferences, my aesthetic. I’m not allowed to have a fixed opinion. I am not allowed to direct my life. But I have a very strong opinion, and I have clear ambition around how I want to direct my life.

So other people are likely to see that in you very clearly. Very clearly. However, for you, it can feel like an inner crisis, like, “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know how to even begin.” We have a hard time beginning with intercept energies, and we have a hard time beginning because we don’t know if we deserve to embody those energies for a pretty good reason—we were told that we don’t.

And I want to say really clearly that parents are just people who had children. They’re not heroes and angels. They’re not Gods and Goddesses; they’re fucked up just like you, just like me. They’re just people. And, so, when we see issues that are intercepted in the birth chart, aka issues that our parents or guardians were unwilling or unable to support in us, don’t get mad at them. I mean, listen, maybe you’re mad at them, and I respect that. I’m not mad at anger. But what I’m trying to say is it’s not something that they did to you; it’s the best they could do.

So there’s so many things in the birth chart where you can see your parents screwed you up, and they coulda, shoulda, woulda done better. But with the intercept energies, they couldn’t have done better because they were in the throes of their own inner battle. And this is how that inner battle shows up in your birth chart. It’s not that they said, “This is bad. I’m going to control you.” It's that they didn’t know how to even deal with those energies. The ways in which they rejected those energies in themselves was so total that it modelled for you that those energies were wrong and bad.

And that’s a place for you to understand that you essentially have an inherited issue. And it’s not inherited like down the family line; it’s inherited from your parent or guardian. Intercept energies do, from my experience, only come from those who raised and reared us. That’s just how that story goes.

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Okay. Now to intercept planets. When we have planets that are in intercept signs—so we have zodiac signs that are intercept in a house, and a planet is in a zodiac sign that is intercept a house. So you might be using whole sign houses, in which case, no interceptions none of the time; you never get this information. Let’s say you’re using Placidus or Koch, which I’m saying wrong. I’m pretty fucking sure I’m saying it wrong. Those are two of the most conventionally used house systems, and they can yield interceptions—not as much as the house system like I use, Campanus.

And, so, let’s say you’re using Placidus, and I’m using Campanus. You might see that you have, let’s say, your mercury is not intercept in your house system. In my house system, it might be intercept. Not all house systems are going to give you the same information. All house systems are going to give you the same Rising Sign, yes. They are going to give you the same Midheaven, yes. But they are not going to give you the same houses, other than the Midheaven and the Ascendent. Again, I did a whole episode on this, so go back and listen to it if you’re interested.

When we are looking at a planet that is intercept, what we are seeing is a planet that we don’t feel the same way it looks to others. Let’s just start there. And the reason why we don’t feel the same way it looks to others is because we have to struggle towards self-acceptance and embodiment in a completely different way. There’s a way that intercept planets, aka planets that are intercept in a house, a little bit function like unaspected planets—which is maybe a good topic for another Hot Take. They function differently than a planet would if it was not intercept. And, again, it’s a bit of a rogue energy because you don’t have a sense of ownership of those energies. Or, if you do, you really had to work hard for it; you had to do a lot of healing work and probably had to separate from your family of origin—if not physically, in the energies of that planet. You had to give yourself permission to outgrow some meaningful dynamic with your parents or guardians or your family members so that you could find yourself on your own terms.

Intercept planets are confusing for you because something really strong in your childhood is telling you that the way that you are naturally, maybe even wonderfully and beautifully, is too much, not enough, wrong, poorly executed, something. Something. Aka just don’t do it.

And, so, when we are looking at the energies of an intercept planet, what you want to know is that you are a little tender in your relationship to that planet, but other people don’t know that about you—not unless you go out of your way to tell them. Not only are you a little tender about the energies of that planet, but there’s also something really cool about it. It’s that you get to figure out in this lifetime how to embody, like really embrace and embody the energies of that planet, in that sign, in that house, which is essentially the healing of an inherited trauma or issue. That’s kind of cool, right.

If you waste your energy—and I’m sorry I’m calling it a waste—blaming your parent or guardian for giving you the ish, you’re missing the opportunity. This is about identifying for yourself who and what you are and enacting and embodying it to the best of your ability. Which essentially is really just your whole chart and your whole life; however, with intercept planets or with intercept houses, signs and houses, we have this real particular spiritual lesson associated with these energies. And whenever we have a lesson or an opportunity, we don’t have to take it, right. We can use it, misuse it; we drag our feet, whatever. It’s on us.

But the beautiful thing is, in order to activate this planet, if we’re talking about intercept planets, all you have to do—and it’s real simple and real difficult—is embrace yourself. It’s embrace how you’re different from the people who raised you. You live in a different time than the one that gave you the issues you have. You are simply different. Being willing to except yourself is beautiful. It’s foundational. But being able to embrace yourself from that foundation of acceptance, that is what our intercept shit needs. Yeah, that’s right—that’s what it needs.

Now, my loves, I know you’re going to send me more questions. I really love it that you will. Can’t wait to answer them. And, as always, if you’re getting value from this, meet me over on Patreon and learn some Tarot with me. Get the bonus episode of Ghost of a Podcast, which is your monthly horoscope as well. Delight in all that I have to offer over on Patreon.

Also, studying astrology is so interesting. It is so exciting. It is so delightful. And it is also sometimes boring and frustrating. I want to validate that you for you because if you are listening to this episode, if you’re interested in interceptions and houses and house systems, you, my friend, are a humungous nerd. And I heart nerds.